Premium
When public principals give up control over private agents: The new independence of ICANN in internet governance
Author(s) -
Becker Manuel
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/rego.12250
Subject(s) - delegation , corporation , corporate governance , incentive , the internet , government (linguistics) , independence (probability theory) , business , internet governance , control (management) , public administration , private sector , law and economics , economics , public relations , finance , law , political science , market economy , management , statistics , mathematics , world wide web , computer science , linguistics , philosophy
In 2016, the United States (US) government relinquished its long‐standing delegation contract with the Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private organization that governs the technical infrastructure of the internet. This presents a puzzle as the US not only gave up a power resource, but also relinquished the possibility, as a public principal, to hold the private agent ICANN accountable. I argue that public principals have incentives to leave control in the hands of private stakeholders when a delegation contract is exposed to external pressure by powerful outside states and the probability of extensive policy changes by the privatized agent is limited. The analysis shows that the unilateral US control over ICANN was strongly challenged by other states and private actors. Instead of granting a greater role to rising powers in internet governance, the US gave up its unilateral influence after internal reforms limited the risk that an independent ICANN could deviate too far from former policies.